Yesterday, Mike and I took a drive to a little town called Milton and stumbled across the Copper Possum Antique Mall, where we spent upwards of an hour. Among our discoveries: an antique policeman’s billy club, 1940s life-size wooden nativity figures and angels, ancient cameras, lost family photo albums, tin wind-up toys, and an antique lifeboat compass.
The main purpose for the expedition, however, was these (seen in the painting above):
These cat eye and birdcage marbles are my most recent additions to what I am coming to think of as my “cast of characters.” Also thanks to the trip, I now have a high-sheen ceramic black rabbit and an antique fishing lure. Strange that these are all I took away from the treasure hunt, but each have a certain quality I’m looking for: the black rabbit is a perfect amalgam of mystery and charm (also embodied in my glass horse figure) and the fishing lure? Well, it reminds me of my father and grandfather and all the fishing trips they took me on as a kid. Plus, you can’t tell here, but it has this luminous iridescence, which I really hope to bring out in a future painting.
And here, in case you were wondering, are some other members of the cast.
My stars are these antique glass horses, which belonged to my Grandmother Droz. They are very popular. When I asked Mike what his favorite subjects were in my paintings, he said the horses and the marbles, so I painted this for him:
pithandrootstudio.com 
I like your use of language here–cast of characters…I’ve been watching the Craft in America series on PBS (which you might enjoy if you haven’t seen it yet: http://video.pbs.org/program/1235387271/) and several artists there talk about objects as their “vocabulary.” I looking forward to your characters’ next performance!
Thanks, Adam. I can’t take full credit for the analogy. I’ve had the artist Wayne Thiebaud on my mind a lot lately and he talks about painting subjects being something like an acting troupe you assemble over time. This probably accounts for how his cakes and pies look almost as if they are arranged on a stage and the lights have just come up.